I've been somewhat distracted by some things that arrived for review yesterday.
Ay chihuahua.
It's a "Crossfire" from Techlasers, the "off brand" store operated by Wicked Lasers, who sent me the less powerful laser about which I rambled on last year.
Techlasers, basically, sells the same superpowered lasers that various other stores sell, only cheaper. They blatantly list the names their competitors use for the same products, with the prices, to make your comparison shopping easier. I like that.
With the money you save, please, please buy some safety goggles.
5 October 2007 at 12:18 am
Oohhhhh! Wicked!
5 October 2007 at 4:41 am
Sooo... is this the piddly little 300mW or the somewhat frightening 500mW model? (OK, both are kinda scary - blindness is instant if the beam catches you in the eye for either of those)
5 October 2007 at 7:14 pm
It's a 350mW.
6 October 2007 at 1:57 am
Mmmm... nice. I'd love a nice high-power laser, but alas I do not have the resources (and insane freebies) of a professional toy reviewer! I had an opportunity to see a 40W xenon-ion laser in action at a local University a couple of years back. Not exactly a hand-held item but... wow! Impressive to say the least. Dangerous as all get out... but impressive. They had a warning sign on the wall with a picture of the hand of a grad student who apprently decided to mess with something along the beam path while the laser was firing. T'wasnt a pretty picture.
8 October 2007 at 1:10 pm
This makes me think of radiation therapy for cancer. These days, they use a lower power source- and bombard tumours from mutiple angles. The surrounding healthy tissue gets a lower dose.
So if you can do this with 1x 350mW laser, could you also do it with 2x 150mW? 3x 100mW ?
It would take a while to set up, but the resulting video could be interesting. Educational, even.
9 October 2007 at 1:31 am
Alan... Typically something like this would be done with an ellipsoidal section. Put an unfocused radiation source at one of the focal points and the tumour at the other and blast away. Something like this (xkcd.com).
9 October 2007 at 8:36 pm
Some questionably cheap high powered green lasers can be found here dealextreme.com caution when looking there though as it's full of things to buy on impulse, and usually you didn't really want the item anyway...